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Postseason roster eligibility

One topic that always generates lots of questions at this time of year is postseason roster eligibility. So I asked assistant general manager John Abbamondi this week, and he gave me a rundown. Here’s how it works.

* The pool for eligible players is as follows: the 25 players on a team’s active roster on Aug. 31, and any players on the disabled list that day (the bereavement list is also covered, but in the Cardinals’ case and most cases it’s just the active roster and the DL).

For the Cardinals’ that’s 28 players: the 25 who were on the active roster that day, plus Troy Glaus, Todd Wellemeyer and Kyle Lohse. That happens to be everyone who was on the roster before today’s callups from Triple-A.

One catch: those players must remain on the roster or DL continuously from Aug. 31 through the end of the regular season. That’s rarely an issue, though. Hard to think of a scenario when that qualification would eliminate someone. But it’s there.

* The only way that changes is if one of those players from the pool is physically unable to play in a postseason round. If that’s the case, that player may be replaced with any player who was in the organization on Aug. 31.

* The old pitcher-player breakdown rule simply doesn’t exist anymore. In past years, the pitcher-player ratio that you had on Aug. 31 had to be the same as you had in October. That no longer applies.

Hope this helps clarify some things.-M.

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It strikes me that this may cause some problems with roster construction. TLR has said (quite soundly) that he wants to cut back to 11 pitchers for the postseason. However, there aren’t 14 position players on this 28-man list unless you include Glaus, who for all practical purposes is unable to perform. Any chance that he could go on the DL so that they could put Freese on the 25-man instead? As I understand it, that’s legal, right?

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